We are in a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned and where it is common for young men and women who have had years of education, to know nothing about the world, to have read nothing, knowing only some speciality or other, for instance, computers. What has happened to us is an amazing invention, computers and the internet and TV, a revolution. This is not the first revolution we, the human race, has dealt with. The printing revolution, which did not take place in a matter of a few decades, but took much longer, changed our minds and ways of thinking. A foolhardy lot, we accepted it all, as we always do, never asked "What is going to happen to us now, with this invention of print?" And just as we never once stopped to ask, How are we, our minds, going to change with the new internet, which has seduced a whole generation into its inanities so that even quite reasonable people will confess that once they are hooked, it is hard to cut free, and they may find a whole day has passed in blogging and blugging etc
-Acceptance Speech, Doris Lessing, Nobel Prize in Literature
According to a famous Cold River philosopher, there are three types of people: those who make things happen; those who things happen to; and those who say, what happened? In cyberspace, 15 minutes of fame becomes 15 certain seconds ... But the Guardian Newspaper in London ok, even if they do misquote! It's a Darwinian process - About 99 percent of these ideas are going to die. But some will emerge and spread. Warhola of 15 - 15 seconds and my Brissie connection Baden ;-)
If God made us who made God? In the end, the web is about connections
Websites link to resources, resources recommend articles, articles refer to experts.
Without links, websites are invisible. Social networks create links between people, forming connections based on interests, expertise, past employment or education, and friendships. Law librarians, while remaining aware of their pitfalls, can use social networks such as LinkedIn, Ning, Facebook, and even MySpace to promote useful websites and legal resources as well their own expertise and interests. "A survey of U.S. journalists by Brodeur, a unit of Omnicom Group suggests that blogs are not only having an impact on the speed and availability of news, but also influence the tone and editorial direction of reporting. The survey is part of an ongoing research project by Brodeur in conjunction with Marketwire to dissect and understand the impact that social media and blogs are having on traditional news delivery. The online survey was conducted among a random sample of North American reporters and editors, and was focused on understanding how social media and blogs influence their work."
• Head Report; [Tail Report has launched with the goal to map out how money is made in the blogosphere. Tail Report works by asking users to anonymously submit information about their site's traffic, rank and monthly revenue. In return, the user receives a custom report detailing what other websites are making and how their revenue compares based a number of factors, such as traffic, rank, number of RSS subscribers, age, number of employees, content, and ad networks. Tail Report ; ]
• · It's well known that kids influence family decisions. The Economist calls them Trillion Dollar kids, but the gist is that kids under 14 influenced almost half of American household spending in 2005. That's around $700 billion. Now imagine all that persuasive energy put behind sustainable enterprises and you've got a revolution underway... Dillhons: Out Of The Mouths Of Children;
• · What is it about tattoos? When I was young, having your skin marked with 'Mom' in a heart, a skull and cross bones, or a loved one's name was left to sailors and others tough enough to take the pain and the consequences when they changed girlfriends. Today, tattoos are fashionably mainstream... like Cold River Tattoos: More Than Skin Deep ; In Ezra Harel's first interview to the Israeli press, he declared that if bond-holders of Rogosin (TASE:ROGO), the company he controlled under Sunday, had been "rational, not greedy an arrangement could have been reached". Lessons in Greed
• · ·, By Charles Babcock, Thomas Claburn, John Foley, W. David Gardner, Antone Gonsalves, Nicholas J. Hoover, K.C. Jones, Elena Malykhina, Richard Martin, Paul McDougall, Marianne McGee, Chris Murphy, Cora Nucci, Art Wittman, and Serdar Yegulalp, InformationWeek, January 26, 2008
"Our guide to great blogs and Web sites worth adding to your bookmarks. The selection ranges from obvious picks like Technabob and Search Engine Watch to more obscure destinations such as Location One, istartedsomething, and GottaBeMobile Top 60 Little-Known Technology Web Sites; Once upon a time, in the great city of Milwaukee, lived a brilliant legal professional named Bella. Bella was part of the litigation practice group at Big, Bold & Smith, s.c. Every Monday the group met to discuss current issues. One Monday, a colleague named Greg informed everyone of a recent decision that could affect the outcome of a large case the firm was handling. After the meeting, Bella asked, "How did you hear about that case?" Greg answered, - I saw it on a blog I monitor. Bella is Bewildered About Blogs
• · · · Scientific American: Wikis, blogs and other collaborative web technologies could usher in a new era of science. Or not. By M. Mitchell Waldrop: "The explosively growing World Wide Web has rapidly transformed retailing, publishing, personal communication and much more. Innovations such as e-commerce, blogging, downloading and open-source software have forced old-line institutions to adopt whole new ways of thinking, working and doing business. Science could be next. A small but growing number of researchers--and not just the younger ones--have begun to carry out their work via the wide-open blogs, wikis and social networks of Web 2.0. And although their efforts are still too scattered to be called a movement--yet--their experiences to date suggest that this kind of Web-based "Science 2.0" is not only more collegial than the traditional variety, but considerably more productive. It's a Darwinian process = About 99 percent of these ideas are going to die. But some will emerge and spread ; French women d’un certain âge tend not to get fat and to stay lucky. They don’t see sex as a privilege for the young and beautiful...Women of France; It’s not just fads and fashions in the likes of shoes or music that spread through social networks. There are also states of mind – happiness, loneliness, altriusm... ; Show me a woman with a good three inches of cleavage on display, and I’ll show you a woman with little faith in her powers of conversation... Truth
• · · · · “Where is home?” asks George Konrád in his memoir of life under totalitarianism. We know the answer: Memory is home... WHERE?; Melancholia is a miraculous invitation to rise above the contented status quo and imagine untapped possibilities. We need sorrow to make us human, alive... Ask any soul-baring 40-year-old exile what he most longs for, and he likely won’t tell you it’s a better career or a more money: he wants freedom to search for meaning of death ;-) Sadness ; Yet another faked memoir: this one from a “mixed-race former child drug-runner” from South-Central
Fake memoirs are once again hitting the headlines. Only last week, Margaret B Jones’ ‘autobiographical’ account of growing up as a mixed-race foster child on the wrong side of the tracks in Los Angeles, Love and Consequences, was celebrated as a work of inspiration. One of America’s leading literary critics, Michiko Kakutani, said it was a ‘humane and deeply affecting memoir’. Now, however, the author has been unveiled as a very white Margaret Seltzer, and her story has been exposed as pure fiction. Auto lies; Memoirs ; Crying Wolf
• · · · · · Not only does Wikipedia need its vandals, the vandals need an orderly Wikipedia, too. Without order, their culture-jamming lacks a context... With Cold River, whatever the rest is, it isn’t silence. The Cold War streams still dominate Central European literature and heart ; Terrorists: often sour, lazy nobodies, ugly, of febrile imagination and small talent, who can only become somebody by murdering others... Terror